Recently, I attended part of a tele-conference (out of curiosity, as a passive participant) organized by the toxicology group in our agency. Their discussions reminded me of a guidance document these folks use for ecological considerations. Particularly, the following flow chart on page 92 explains my reason for walking out in the middle of the tele-conference, a lot better than words! Talk about cramming information into 8-inch x11-inch!
I respect these scientists who take apparently random data, quantify it, analyze the numbers, and come out with qualitative recommendations. It is just like in any other science, except that finding dose-response relation data on humans is hard to obtain; we are not expendable like guinea pigs:-(
Even though I did not understand most of what they were talking about (hence the walk out), I did like their thought processes in accounting for biases in epidemiological studies.
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